The Lost Formula of Cagliostro
by Jack of None
Summary: A failed NaNo project that I'm still working on. A turnofthecentury pulp adventure shamelessly crossing the Raffles, Lupin, Holmes, and Fantomas universes. Genius detectives against criminal masterminds against gentleman thieves against each other.
1. Unexpected Events in a Paris Bank Vault

**Chapter One -- Unexpected Events in a Paris Bank Vault**

"Oh, come off it, Bunny," Raffles sighed. He pressed his ear to the door, listening in the brief anxious silence that followed. Bunny stopped his pacing and frowned, only to settle back into it a moment later. "Honestly. Your footsteps are throwing me off."

"Sorry," Bunny murmured, sheepishly. Raffles wrapped his white-gloved hand around the handle of the vault's enormous tumbler wheel and began to turn it again with deliberate slowness, listening for the tell-tale click of the interior mechanism falling into place.

Bunny slid to the floor and sat with his knees drawn up to his chest, watching Raffles at his work. Twenty minutes, at the outside -- that's all they had. It was nerve-wracking, able to do nothing but wait while Raffles went about his safe-cracking; Bunny wondered, with a grim self-deprecating smile, why Raffles had brought him along in the first place. To keep watch, Raffles had told him. Bunny did not see the point of the exercise -- if someone did happen to come upon them, the sterile hallway where they were currently occupying, there would be nowhere for them to hide...

Raffles continued to turn the knob; Bunny sat and listened to the grinding of the internal mechanism, trying to decipher the one aberrant noise that alerted Raffles' trained ear to the lock's correct configuration. Earlier that week, Bunny had deposited a trunk of supposed valuables and withdrawn it a day later, giving Raffles a chance to inspect the vault from the inside; Raffles had withdrawn himself from the trunk to announce that he had discovered that one of the vault locks had an imperfection in the mechanism that caused it to click audibly when it fell into the correct configuration. Bunny hated the trick -- the last time Raffles had used it, he had used Bunny as an unwilling dupe -- but he had to admit that it had been quite effective in this case. The lady Valois' collection of bronze statuary was almost in their grasp. Left with little else to do, Bunny fished his pocket watch out of his waistcoat pocket and watched the second hand tick its way around the face.

"The needle on which our success hangs," Raffles murmured. After a moment's reflection, Bunny realized he was probably referring to the hands of Bunny's watch, glimpsed out of the corner of his eye. Raffles was in a poetic mood...Bunny had known Raffles for long enough to know that when Raffles was in a poetic mood, dreadful things lay ahead. Not failure -- no, Raffles seemed to Bunny to be living a charmed life, free from the petty concerns of ordinary criminals whose schemes might have a chance of failure -- but grandiose, artistic plotting that succeeded against all reason. Poetic moods caused Raffles to send unsalable golden cups to the Queen anonymously. Bunny suspected that Lady Valois' bronze statuary would be similarly unsalable -- a charming collection of trinkets for Raffles to marvel at on his mantelpiece. Art was all very well and good, but it was money they needed, not sentiment.

Ten minutes since they'd drugged the guards. Finally, Raffles let out a small laugh of triumph and began to pull on the vault door. The heavy barrier began to creak open with agonizing slowness; Bunny leapt to his feet to assist, and after a minute's work the vault stood open before them, a great dusty expanse of impenetrable blackness.

"We've bypassed a foot and a half of steel and brass machinery, Bunny," Raffles said, running his fingers along the great gears and captured weights exposed on the vault door's back side. "Not bad. Not bad at all." He struck a match on the side of the door and held it out into the darkness. "Well, shall we?"

Bunny nodded. "We've come all this way, haven't we?"

"You've only come from London, Bunny," Raffles said, with a slight, enigmatic smile. "I've come all the way back from Hades." And with that, Raffles stepped into the inky expanse of the bank vault, his grinning face illuminated by the flicking flame like the Devil preparing to drag an unlucky sinner down to the depths of Hell. Bunny was suddenly reminded of his school days, reading the sly lines of Mephistopheles in _Dr Faustus_ and imagining Raffles' sardonic voice and ironic smile.

Bunny swallowed, dug around in his pocket for a match of his own, and lit it awkwardly on the matchbook cover. "Once more unto the breach," he whispered, and stepped over the threshold.

It was cool inside the vault, the air heavy with the staleness of a long closed room. Bunny stifled a cough as their passage stirred up a thin layer of dust that flickered like stardust in the attenuated light of their pair of matches. "Raffles, won't they see our footprints in the dust? Or our hand prints, at least?"

"Don't worry, Bunny. Lady Valois paid a visit to the bank just yesterday in order to show off her collection to an amateur archaeologist. The bank attendant's footprints have already disturbed the dust well enough."

"You didn't mention that."

"I had assumed you would keep to your part and trust that I had everything under control." Raffles' match sputtered and went out; Bunny saw Raffles palm the remains of the match before his own light source failed and, slipping the used match into his pocket, he fished his match book back out of his interior jacket pocket and fumbled with another match.

There was a snap and a hiss in the darkness, and Bunny saw Raffles illuminated from the flame in his hand, sitting calmly on a large leather-covered trunk as though he were relaxing on an ottoman in his drawing room. "Come on, Bunny, we've got nothing to gain by hesitating now. This is the very thing we're after -- take one end of it and I'll haul up the other."

"Are you sure we're going to be able to get it out in time? It looks awfully big."

"Antique bronze votives are hollow. There're a lot of them in there -- enough for a whole pantheon and their children, I'll warrant -- but it shouldn't be too difficult to carry. After all, we've got the cab right outside. It won't be very far." Raffles was being unusually reassuring. Bunny was not sure how to react. "Well, come on."

Obediently -- because time was of the essence, and once one was inside a bank vault in the middle of the night there was really no turning back -- Bunny wrapped his hands around the handle closest to him. Raffles extinguished his match and grabbed the opposite handle, and with a whispered "One...two...three..." they lifted the trunk with a minimum of struggle.

"Heavier than I'd anticipated," Raffles said as they backed out of the vault with their prize. "But no matter." Raffles bore his end of the trunk with surprising aplomb -- for someone who was recently presumed dead from a gunshot wound to the head, Raffles was surprisingly hale and healthy. Bunny had not pressed Raffles for the story of how he had managed to cheat death a second time...if, indeed, he had cheated death at all and not simply pulled some elaborate trick on the rest of the world. An anonymous telegram insisting that Bunny come to Paris immediately was all it took -- just two words, _my rabbit_, and he knew. There was only one person on earth who would bother to send an anonymous telegram to an ex-convict no-account newspaper poet.

Two weeks after the telegram arrived, Harry Manders -- Bunny again, for the first time in two long years -- found himself in France, staring breathlessly at the sharp, ironical face he had never hoped, or dreamed, that he would see again.

"It's been a long time, Bunny," was all the explanation Raffles had given. Just a schoolboy nickname and a charming smile, and here Bunny was again, hauling someone else's treasure out of a bank vault with a trail of unconscious guards behind him.

Retracing their steps was short work. Out of the hallway, though the back entrance, and into the waiting cab that stood just outside in the alleyway, waiting for its cargo. There was no one in the alley -- Raffles had seen to that. A thorough check of the bobby's beat schedules, a bit of misdirection, and a great deal of timing.

The driver was one of Raffles' associates. He seemed to have collected a cloud of them in the two years since he had shipped off to the Foreign Legion. He explained them as brothers-in-arms, although privately Bunny doubted that Raffles had been stationed with so many soldiers willing to drive a get-away cab.

It was a moment's work to slip the trunk into the back of the cab and conceal it beneath a trap door in the cab floor. Bunny and Raffles then adroitly discarded their coats, shoes, and hats for entirely new sets that Raffles had thoughtfully left in the cabin of the cab before heading, on foot, in the exact opposite direction of the cab.

"Always change your shoes, Bunny, once your sport is done," Raffles admonished as they picked their way through the flickering lamplight weaving effortlessly between the drunken party-goers and cat-calling streetwalkers of downtown Paris at midnight. Raffles lit a cigarette with an air of self-satisfaction.

It was a relief when they finally reached their hotel room -- even after years with Raffles, Bunny seemed to see detectives in every passing glance and hear police whistles in the screeches of alley cats after a job. Raffles locked the door with a self-satsified sigh as Bunny sat heavily on the threadbare couch with his head in his hands.

"Cold feet, Bunny? Wait 'till we see the loot." Raffles took out his cigarette case with the ease of a magician palming cards and lit up one of his Sullivan cigarettes. "Have a drink, my rabbit. It'll be a moment yet." With only a slight tremble, Bunny reached for the flask of port and poured himself a glass.

"Sorry...it's just...it's been quite a bit of..."

"Quite a bit of time since you went straight, eh? I'm dreadfully sorry to have dragged you into such an overwhelming job on your first day back on the job, but Bunny...oh, Bunny, I can't ever hope to find a second even a fraction as good as you. Reliable as always!" Raffles poured his own glass of port and held it up to the light. "A toast to us," he said. Bunny clinked his glass with Raffles'.

A knock interrupted their toast. "Ah, right on schedule," Raffles said, and opened the door cautiously. The hallway was empty save for a single black leather covered trunk -- Lady Valois' collection.

Raffles reached out and pulled the trunk by one handle into the door. It came through with surprising ease -- it seemed to weigh fraction of what it had in the bank vault, bumping through the door frame with a hollow thump. As Bunny watched, stunned, Raffles shattered the lock with a brass candlestick and tore open the lid.

Inside, there was nothing but the soft velvet lining and a small card the size of a gentleman's calling card on which someone had written in an elegant hand:

_My most generous thanks for your assistance in this theft, Mssrs. _

_I do hope our paths will cross again and, when that day comes, our profit will instead be mutual. _

_Warmest regards, _

_ Arséne Lupin, Gentleman Burglar _


	2. The World Reknowned Detective

**Chapter Two -- The World-Reknowned Detective**

For someone who had no interest in informing the public of his coming, Sherlock Holmes' arrival in Paris was remarkably well-announced. It was uncertain which enterprising reporter had uncovered this particular piece of information and convinced his editor to run the story in the _Journal de Paris, _but there it was in solid black and white: _The officers of the Suréte eagerly await the arrival of their esteemed colleague from across the Channel, M. Sherlock Holmes. As perhaps the finest amateur detective in the world, M. Sherlock Holmes' presence in Paris can only spell trouble for the criminal element. Reports seem to suggest that the Suréte has been corresponding extensively with M. Sherlock Holmes -- perhaps one may speculate that he has come to finish his business with the notorious Arséne Lupin? _

"Appalling," Sherlock Holmes said, tossing the newspaper aside in annoyance. "If I had come to finish my 'business', as they term it, with this Lupin character, I would certainly have lost the element of surprise due to this ridiculous article. You shouldn't have insisted on publishing those stories of yours, Watson. My movements have become a public spectacle."

Dr John Watson, who was currently busy pouring over a street map of Paris, looked up at his companion. "But, Holmes," he began, furrowing his brow, "it isn't as though we're actually here about that Lupin nonsense. Is it really such a burden to be admired?" It was a rhetorical question -- Holmes did not reply, and Watson already knew the answer.

"I would prefer that my name not be bandied about in headlines like a stage actor's," Holmes said eventually. "Also, I am concerned about this idea that I am somehow Lupin's _adversary_. It's as though the French public believes us to be the lead characters in a sensational novel."

"The business of police work often seems like a sensational novel to those not involved," Watson observed sagely. "And Frenchmen have a tendency towards the romantic." Sherlock Holmes shook his head in irritation and fished a letter out of his coat pocket, which he opened with surgical precision and began to read.

"Another letter from your brother?" Watson inquired. Sherlock nodded curtly and continued reading; sensing he was unlikely to get anything more from him, Watson turned to the window to watch the streets of Paris pass by. A quick stop at the hotel, then to the Suréte to meet with Inspector Ganimard -- a man who, despite his advanced years, was considered by the French public to be their very own Sherlock Holmes. And, Watson thought grimly, perhaps the only man in Europe who had taken his publications about Professor Moriarty seriously.

Sherlock finished the letter, folded it with what seemed to be annoyance, and stored it away in his jacket pocket. For the past month, Sherlock had been receiving a great deal of correspondence from his brother, occasionally as much as a telegram or letter every day. It was worrisome -- Sherlock showed no inclination to share what was in the missives, but Watson's brief acquaintance with his friend's singular older brother had suggested that the man would only go to the trouble of sending letter after letter if there was some dreadfully pressing problem. Watson suspected that it had something to do with the rumors that had brought them to France in the first place, but it seemed Sherlock was not inclined to enlighten him.

Despite Sherlock's misgivings on that front, Holmes and Watson found no reporters or curious onlookers to welcome them when their cab pulled up to the gates of the Suréte. Aside from an assortment of gendarmes wandering the grounds and going about their business, there was only a distinguished-looking gentleman, perhaps in his late fifties, with a neatly trimmed white beard and a pair of pince-nez reading glasses perched squarely on his round nose. He was not a large man, and seemed to be swallowed up in the enormous grey overcoat that he wore with the collar turned up against the late October chill. His face lit up with honest pleasure when he saw the pair disembark.

"Inspector Ganimard, I presume," Watson heard Sherlock Holmes say, as he negotiated the fare with the driver. As always, Holmes' French was flawless.

"And you must be Monsieur Sherlock Holmes. Ah, yes, of course! Who else?" As Watson finished his business with the cabby, the older man turned to him with the same genial smile. "And whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?"

"This is Doctor John Watson," Sherlock interjected, before Watson could answer for himself. "He is my associate."

"His chronicler," Watson said with a small smile. "And some occasional help in his adventures. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Inspector Ganimard." He presented his hand, and the old man shook it firmly.

"There! Now that we have all become acquainted, shall we retire to my office?" Ganimard suggested. Holmes nodded curtly, and followed Ganimard into the courtyards and labyrinthine hallways of France's national police headquarters.

The interior was remarkably busy -- junior officers and sober-looking clerks trotted back and forth across their path, laden down with papers and sporting worried looks. Once or twice a uniformed gendarme attempted to corner Inspector Ganimard, but found himself waved aside with a polite word.

"What on earth is the matter?" Watson asked, observing the furious activity that surrounded him.

"Judging by the withdrawal records that previous gendarme was carrying...I would surmise a bank heist," Sherlock observed. Ganimard laughed.

"Even in simple conversation you do not disappoint, Monsieur Holmes! You are quite correct. Last night some enterprising scoundrel managed to drug several of the guards in the western branch of the Banque de France, crack open a safe, and make off with some priceless antique statuary in bronze."

"Is there a suspect?" Holmes asked. Ganimard shook his head.

"No, Monsieur Holmes, there is none whatsoever...which is to say, there is only one man who could have done it."

"Arséne Lupin," breathed Holmes.

"Our very own national thief," said Inspector Ganimard, with a tone that bordered on affectionate. Watson raised an eyebrow. Though he knew that Holmes had been called to France before and had crossed paths with the mysterious burglar who called himself Arséne Lupin, he had not been there himself owing to the illness of his wife -- God rest her soul. All he had ever managed to wring from Sherlock about the incident was that he had abandoned the case when the criminal, inexplicably, decided to return his stolen goods to the victim in the exact condition in which they had been taken.

"Indeed," Holmes said coldly. "If you'll permit me, I would like to have a look at the scene."

"Of course! We would be delighted to have -- if I may say -- the world's greatest consulting detective on our side. Ah! Here we are," Ganimard said, arriving in front of a cherry wood door emblazoned with the name of _Inspector Charles Ganimard_.

"No, no, you misunderstand me, Inspector," Holmes calmly said as Ganimard reached for the door. "I would like to have a look at the scene of the crime immediately."

"But, Monsieur Holmes," Ganimard said, furrowing his brow. "You've come all this way to speak with me about your rogue professor --"

"Commission a private cab. We may converse on the way," Holmes said.

"I thought you had no interest in catching Lupin on this trip, Holmes" Watson insisted. By now Holmes was heading back towards the street with considerable speed, forcing Watson and Ganimard to trot along behind him.

"I have a suspicion I need to confirm," Holmes replied. "And if it turns out to be correct, then Lupin is perhaps the least of the Suréte's difficulties. Come!"


	3. Inspector Ganimard's Ward

**Chapter Three -- Inspector Ganimard's Ward**

Outside, where the bankers met their clients, things were relatively quiet for a place that had only recently been the site of a daring heist. Inconspicuous gendarmes wandered the premises with clockwork regularity; customers came and went, oblivious to the furious activity in the vaults. Due to the high profile nature of the crime, the Suréte had made sure to keep the incident from the press, at least for the time being. Within the next few days, of course, it would make headlines, but day's reprieve from the scrutiny of the public was a blessing to the police and the bank alike.

Inspector Ganimard lead Sherlock and Watson into the back of the bank, picking through the corridors filled with anxious clerks, wandering to and fro with their heads down. Like grass that becomes taller and thicker the farther afield one goes, the scattered plain-clothes gendarmes became a uniformed presence closer to the vaults, wandering back and forth and talking amongst themselves.

They found the scene of the crime roped sectioned off with chalk and a pair of uniformed keeping watch. A third gendarme -- a very young man with a sallow complexion and angular features -- was engaged in an animated conversation with a man whose mildly unfashionable suit and expensive bowler hat proclaimed him a mid-level manager.

" -- and I _demand_ a look!" said the bank manager, his face growing red. The young man pursed his thin lips in irritation.

"With all due respect, sir," the young gendarme said, his voice cold, "you are not a policeman."

"Nevertheless, I -- "

"Something the matter, Monsieur?" said Inspector Ganimard with a cheerful smile. The bank manager whirled on his heels, but his words of anger died on his lips when he found himself face to face with France's most famous detective flanked by a concerned-looking Doctor Watson and the unmistakable profile of the famous Sherlock Holmes. "Juve? Is this man interfering with police business?"

"No, no! Of course not!" snapped the manager, speaking over the young man's irritated "Yes!". "I was just passing through. Carry about your business, Inspector Ganimard -- and...and your companions." And with a curt bow to Sherlock Holmes, the bank manager ducked out of the corridor as quickly as he could.

"Still concerned about your celebrity?" Watson whispered to Sherlock, with a bit of a smile. Sherlock did not answer.

The young gendarme adjusted his spectacles and peered at Inspector Ganimard. "Thanks," the boy muttered. Ganimard beamed.

"Oh, don't be so shy. Monsieur Holmes? Doctor Watson? It is my distinct pleasure to introduce Officer Juve Desmarais, one of our newest and most promising recruits. Additionally, he is my godson and -- as of last Thursday -- my ward." The boy shuffled awkwardly.

"I've only been on the force a few weeks," Juve said. "No need to go making pronouncements."

"Nonsense, nonsense," said Ganimard. "Don't put yourself down in front of your elders! This is Monsieur Sherlock Holmes, an amateur detective from England -- or, perhaps I should say, a freelancer, since I doubt that Monsieur Holmes could reasonably be described as an _amateur._ And this is his biographer and assistant, Dr James Watson."

"How do you do?" Watson said, extending his hand for the boy to shake, which he did with a firm grip. Sherlock merely nodded curtly, peering at Juve with his keen, glancing eyes. Juve looked uncomfortable -- people often did when under the scrutiny of Sherlock Holmes. When he looked at one, it seemed as though he could read one's thoughts written out as plainly as a book.

"You have recently left the university," Sherlock said. It was not a question. Juve raised his eyebrows.

"So Doctor Watson really did tell the truth in those stories..." he said. "You're like a mind-reader." Sherlock snorted disdainfully.

"Mind-reading! It's only logic," he said. "You see, your --"

"No," Juve cut Sherlock's explanation off before he could begin. The detective looked at him quizzically. "I don't want to hear an explanation, Monsieur Holmes," Juve continued quietly. "I will puzzle it out for myself, or I'll simply go on not knowing." Watson, who had spent several years in the company of the impassive detective, could not suppress a small smile when he saw a nigh-imperceptible look of satisfaction cross Sherlock's ordinarily serious face. The young gendarme nodded politely to Watson and Sherlock, then gestured in the direction of the vault. "Do you want to have a look, Messieurs?"

"Yes, yes," Sherlock said, brushing past Juve and ducking into the bank vault. Ganimard smiled, laid his hand on Juve's blue-clad shoulder. "Something the matter?" Ganimard inquired. "Juve shook his head.

"No, no. I'm simply thinking," he said. "Just left university..." he muttered.

"Don't push yourself too hard, young man," Ganimard said. "Sherlock Holmes is --"

"A genius," Juve interrupted. "Yes. I know."

"...I was going to say, not a personable sort," said Ganimard. "But both are true."

"The world will need more of him," Juve said.

"Juve, my dear young fellow," Ganimard said, after a moment's thought, "I am not entirely sure that the world is quite equipped to _handle_ more of him."


End file.
